Re: GCJ ------ file type not supported by system

[Andïï <gnu_andrew@member.fsf.org>]

On 3 September 2014 17:12, Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia
<guille.rodriguez@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Mario,
>
> 2014-09-01 12:47 GMT+02:00 Mario Torre <neugens@redhat.com>:
> [...]
> >> Yes I am sure about this, but that is not my point. What I am saying
> >> is that it would be very good for the project to be maintained by a
> >> team who really wants to move things forward.
> >>
> >
> > I understand what you mean, but the current maintainer has always
> > integrated patches and done releases, I think the problem is not the
> > lack of one maintainer willing to move forward, is lack of manpower to
> > do it.
>
> Well,part of the job of the maintainer for an OSS project, perhaps the
> most important one, is to attract and motivate other developers. This
> is how the 'lack of manpower' problem is solved.
>
> Just as an example: 0.99 is now over 2 years old, yet the official
> Classpath site still lists 0.98 (2009) as "current". 0.99 is not even
> listed in the downloads page. If the first thing a developer sees is
> that the latest release is more than 5 years old, that does not
> exactly help. I already mentioned this in this list, by the way
> (https://www.mail-archive.com/classpath@gnu.org/msg15456.html).


I'm aware of this and I see your point. The issue is that the web pages
rely on a tool called wml that seems to be no longer maintained and
I've simply not had chance to look at fixing it up myself or doing away
with it.

If you want to do so, feel free. I can point you in the right direction.

>
>
> Also I am not the first one to raise these concerns. Pekka Enberg
> wrote an excellent post about "the future of GNU Classpath" in Dec
> 2010, and the situation has not changed a lot since then. I cannot
> find the original post anymore (the blog was hosted at posterous
> spaces, which is no longer available), but the thread in the ML
> remains (http://www.spinics.net/lists/gnu-classpath/msg03027.html).
> But you already know this of course, since you took part in that
> conversation.
>
> >
> > As I said, anyone can step in, if patches start to flow (including bug
> > fixes) I'm sure they'll be integrated correctly and quickly.
> >
> > If someone wants to take the project, the best thing to do is to start
> > contributing patches. After all, how can the maintainer know if someone
> > is seriously willing to take his role if there lack of a serious and
> > recent contribution flow?
> >
>
> Of course if someone wanted to take on the project, then that would be
> the process. I completely agree with you.
>

There have been three changes made this year already:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/classpath.git/log/

They were included pretty much as soon as they were posted.

I also have some stuff I'm working on, but it has to take second place
to maintaining three (soon four) major versions of OpenJDK/IcedTea.

> At the end what I am saying is that:
>
> 1. Development of GNU Classpath seems to be stalled now (quoting from
> an earlier post from Andrew Haley: "I have to tell you that Classpath
> is not being actively developed, so your problem is unlikely to be
> fixed.")

Sorry, but that's simply nonsense, as can be seen by what I've said above.
It's slow, because there aren't many people with the time and interest, but
it's certainly not 'stalled'.

>
> 2. This is due to the lack of manpower, which in turn is probably due
> to the lack of interested developers, but also to the fact that most
> of the development effort of the current team is going to OpenJDK
> instead.
>
> 3. Given the above, perhaps the current maintainers should consider
> switching priorities and start actively looking for a "competent
> successor" (as in lesson #5 of ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar").

Maybe rather than complaining and telling us what we already know, you
could help by providing patches?

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but this is really quite unhelpful to someone
who's trying to do what they can for the project with the limited resources
available.

Pekka did so and, as far as I'm aware, they've all been integrated into the
codebase.

>
> Best,
> --
> Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia
> guille.rodriguez@gmail.com




-- 
Andii :-)